All entries for Monday 17 March 2014

Crimea: Then I'll Fight You For It

Writing about web page http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26606097

In an old English story, a tramp was asleep in the grass by a lane. The landowner woke him roughly:

Get off my land!

The tramp replied:

How come it's your land?

The landowner:

My ancestors fought for it!

The tramp:

Then I'll fight you for it.

This story offers a dubious principle and an excellent moral. The dubious principle is that property is theft: no one's claim on property is more legitimate than anyone else's. The excellent moral is that if we lived by that principle our's would be a world of chronic insecurity and unremitting threats in which no one could sleep peacefully.

In that light, here are some facts about Russia.

• Russia's territory covers more of the globe than any other country: more than 17 million square kilometres.
• Russia's land border is the second longest in the world: more than 20,000 kilometres, shared with 16 sovereign neighbours.
• Between 1870 and 2001, the Correlates of War dataset on Militarized Interstate Disputes counts 3,168 bilateral conflicts involving the show or use of force. Every dispute involves a country pair, and the same dataset also registers the country that originated the dispute. Over thirteen decades Russia (the USSR from 1917 to 1991) originated 219 disputes, more than any other country. Note, by the way, that this is not about capitalism and communism; Russia's pole position is the same both before and after the Revolution. Also-rans include the United States (in second place with 161 conflicts) China (third with 151), the UK (fourth with 119), and Iran (fifth with 112). (My more patriotic readers will want to know where Germany stands: lagging behind at sixth with 102). These results are reported by Harrison and Wolf (2012, p. 1064, footnote 29).

Why has Russia achieved this preeminent position in the history of conflict? Here are three reasons.

• Russia is large, and small countries have little weight to throw around.
• Russia has many neighbours, and therefore many opportunities to engage in bilateral disputes.
• Russia's regime has always been authoritarian, with the exception of the few years either side of the collapse of communism, when Russia's borders were able to change relatively peacefully. It is an established empirical regularity that authoritarianism predisposes a state to engage in conflict (the literature is surveyed and also qualified by Harrison and Wolf).

In most of European history, borders have changed through violence. The Eurasian landmass is for the most part a vast plain, with mountains only on the margins, and without natural frontiers. The absence of natural defences other than a few rivers and wetlands has allowed armies to roam freely back and forth across vast distances, killing as they go. European sovereignty was based on possession, and sovereignty changed hands when rivals fought for it.

The stability of borders is a tremendously important condition for economic development. Unstable borders engender conflict, raiding, and killing. Stable borders can be opened for trade and the movement of merchandise and merchants. The goods, cultural values, skills, and talents that flow across stable borders enrich both sides. Stable borders also allow the development of democracy, as argued by Douglas M. Gibler (2007), whereas territorial disputes prevent it.

Russia has suffered terribly from the territorial disputes of past centuries. When the Soviet Union broke up, Russia's new borders were drawn for the most part peacefully. This was a tremendously hopeful omen for Russia's future. Particularly important were the assurances given to Ukraine in 1994: Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons and in return the US, UK, and Russia guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity. It is all the more shocking that Russia has created an opportunity, which it is now seizing, to revise its border with Ukraine unilaterally and by force.

That some Russian nationalists now regret the 1994 agreement is completely irrelevant: Russia gave its word, and so did we.

In the present crisis the issue that should take precedence over all others is the integrity of European borders and the process of adjusting them lawfully and without violence. That should come before everything else, including rights of self-determination and the political composition of this or that government. No good will come of Russia's violation. We all stand to lose by it. But anyone with knowledge of Russia's history knows that Russia, of all countries, has most to lose by returning Europe to the poisoned era of conflicted borders and perpetual insecurity.

References

Gibler, Douglas M. 2007. Bordering on Peace: Democracy, Territorial Issues, and Conflict. International Studies Quarterly 51:3, pp. 509-532.

Harrison, Mark, and Nikolaus Wolf. 2012. The Frequency of Wars. Economic History Review 65:3, pp. 1055-1076. Repec handle: http://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ehsrev/v65y2012i3p1055-1076.html.

Mark Harrison : 17 Mar 2014 12:06 |  Tags: History Russia War |  Comments (8) |  Close comments |  Report a problem